Poisonous football

If you watched the Nebraska-Texas football game Saturday, it became clear to you that something was horribly wrong with the Huskers.

Of course, we all chalked it up to nerves. To anxiousness. To the Huskers letting their brains slip into R (Revenge) before ever engaging in D (Drive the @#$%!*% ball down the #$%!@*+&! field, you jerks!).

Face it, we just chalked it up to Husker coaches yet again letting Mack Brown and his Tejas 22 get under their skins and into their heads.

Of course, we are fans. That means we are wrong. Horribly, embarrassingly, ignorantly and knuckle-draggingly wrong. Just ask NU Coach Bo Pelini.

No, really. Coach Bo explains it all in Sunday's Omaha World-Herald.


IT WASN'T emotion, or nerves or anything like that. See?

Bo Pelini says the outside influences did not factor, that emotion played no role Saturday for Nebraska and that the Huskers again lost to Texas only because they failed to make plays.

A mountain of evidence from this 20-13 UT win suggests another conclusion: that NU wanted it too badly.

How else to explain the three dropped touchdown passes? Or the opening seven minutes that included uncharacteristic missed tackles and a key fumble by senior Roy Helu? It led to a 10-point hole from which NU never climbed.

“A terrible start,” said Pelini, who dropped to 1-4 in October home games as the Nebraska coach.

AND HUSKER receivers dropping something like 873 passes during the game -- about four of them sure touchdowns? It couldn't be nerves, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Nuh uh.

In this doomed series of Big 12 heavyweights, frustration climaxed for Nebraska on Saturday as Texas improved to 4-0 in Lincoln since 1998.

The Longhorns (4-2, 2-1) won for the ninth time in 10 games against NU as a conference foe. UT denied the Huskers and their fans of the moment they all so desired: redemption against Texas before the Huskers bolt next year for the Big Ten.

Barring a December rematch in the Big 12 championship game, they'll never meet again as league foes. And if this is how it ends, what a disappointment for Nebraska.

“Losing to anyone is not a good feeling,” NU defensive end Cameron Meredith said. “but especially Texas.”

The all-too-familiar scenarios played out often for Nebraska on Saturday.

Notably, there were the drops by Rex Burkhead, Niles Paul and Brandon Kinnie. All three passes were thrown well — the first a Taylor Martinez pass on the opening play of the second quarter; the others from Zac Lee, who replaced Martinez midway through the third quarter.

“It's pretty obvious,” Pelini said. “We had our opportunities to make plays. We didn't make plays. They did. They won the football game.”

BUT NOT making the plays, in which "not making the plays" means "dropped every thrown football laid perfectly into your outstretched hands?" And knowing for sure -- after all, Coach Bo said -- that it wasn't AT ALL due to . . . PSYCH!!!

Well, then. This could be serious, and it seems to me -- given the unlikely repetition of such specific inaction by skilled professional student athletes -- we need to start looking at environmental and medical causes.

Perhaps so many dropped passes could be traced to identical symptoms spread among a number of Nebraska players. (In this, we can use the Longhorns as our "control group." They spent only 24 hours or so in Lincoln, and they exhibited few of the symptoms associated with affected NU players.)

Several things come to mind as a possible reason for so many dropped passes Saturday -- and, indeed, so many fumbles by Nebraska throughout the present football season. The likeliest place to start would be some kind of numbness and/or paralysis in players' extremities, particularly the hands.

Now we're thinking diabetes, nerve damage, ministrokes, Reynaud's disease, peripheral artery disease (Thanks, pharmaceutical TV ads for the heads up!) . . . or multiple sclerosis. A mass outbreak of one of these maladies, however, is highly unlikely in this case.

What we need is something that would cause these symptoms in significant numbers within a group, and cause these symptoms virtually simultaneously. Something that's not nerves, or excessive emotion, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Searching Internet medical databases up and down, I could find only one explanation, and it is indeed a frightening one. In fact, as soon as this post goes up on the blog, I'm firing off an extremely urgent E-mail to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, with a copy forwarded to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

LIVES ARE at stake, and I'm not talking about some unhinged Husker fan doing something stupid to a player or a coach.

No, I'm talking mercury poisoning.

Look, it's all here:

Symptoms of Chronic Mercury Poisoning

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

* irritability [Pelini brothers (Bo and Carl) --R21]
* anxiety/nervousness, often with difficulty in breathing [NU fans at Memorial Stadium]
* restlessness [Ditto]
* exaggerated response to stimulation [Pelini brothers]
* fearfulness [NU fans in stadium]
* emotional instability [Pelini brothers]
-lack of self control [Bo Pelini]
-fits of anger, with violent, irrational behavior [Pelini brothers]
* loss of self confidence [Entire state of Nebraska]
* indecision [Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson]
* shyness or timidity, being easily embarrassed [Entire state of Nebraska]
* loss of memory [What were we talking about?]
* inability to concentrate [Jenn Sterger is HOTT!!!!!]
* lethargy/drowsiness [Entire Nebraska offense]
* insomnia [Who can sleep now?]
* mental depression, despondency [Are you kidding me? If you're not depressed, you must have flown in from Tejas.]
* withdrawal [Leave me alone.]
* suicidal tendencies [Life has not been worth living since 1998.]
* manic depression [Fiddle dee dee! After all, tomorrow is another day!]

* numbness and tingling of hands, feet, fingers, toes, or lips [Taylor Martinez, NU receiving corps]
* muscle weakness progressing to paralysis [NU offense]
* ataxia [?????????]
* tremors/trembling of hands, feet, lips, eyelids or tongue [Husker receiving corps during game; NU coaching staff after game.]
* incoordination [Husker offense]
* myoneural transmission failure resembling Myasthenia Gravis [NU receivers -- couldn't see the football coming.]

SEE WHAT I mean? Mercury poisoning. It clearly affects the entire Nebraska football team, and probably everyone spending any significant time on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. Possibly it could be a statewide crisis, I am not sure at this point.

We was robbed? Hell, no. We was poisoned!

This is urgent, and it is incumbent upon the state government to act immediately.

Unless, of course, the state's political and bureaucratic establishments are, at this moment, flying into fits of rage and trying to beat up one another, thwarted, however, by lack of coordination, paralysis of the extremities and an inability to see straight.

In other words, an average mercury-poisoned day at the office.

Why did Santa Anna bother?

Mis amigos en México,

We are sooooo, soooooooooo sorry about the late unpleasantness of that whole Mexican-American War thing. We are also soooo, soooooooo sorry that, previously, American settlers moved into Tejas and caused so much trouble for you with that most unfortunate war of independence.

We'll forget the Alamo if you will.

I'll tell you what. Take Tejas back, with our deepest apologies. Really, it's yours. No, go ahead. We were wrong to have annexed it in the first place.

Nuestras mas sinceras disculpas.

Somos lo siento. Realmente.

More crap from the No. 2 state

Everything's bigger in Tejas.

First of all, there's the outsized ego of its state university. And don't try to convince University of Tejas fans theirs isn't the only school in Tejas, if not the world -- they won't believe you.

And the "bigger in Tejas" list also includes, no doubt, the feedlots. They'd have to be to hold as much bulls*** as what flows out of the Land of Big Hair and Small Brains every time Jennifer Floyd Engel posts another column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

One of the best rivalries in sports will not be the same; just ask Arkansas what happened to its rivalries after leaving the SWC. Can you imagine the Aggie War Hymn with "goodbye to Louisiana State University"?

Of course, Governor Good Hair wants A&M to stay with Texas.

What he needs to be doing is trying to save the Big XII. I do not say this lightly since this league obviously had fatal flaws, starting with its clearly overmatched commissioner, Dan Beebe, and a lot of schools who did not know their role.

And I am talking to my alma mater, Mizzou. Great job being played by The Big Ten, and enjoy begging for inclusion in the Mountain West. My check is not in the mail, nor will it be until heads roll.

I am also including Nebraska, which idiotically believes going to The Big Ten will turn back the clock to 1990, when 'roided partial qualifiers ruled the college football landscape. How smart are Nebraskans? They actually buy this "more aligned with culture and academic mission" nonsense being spewed Friday.

And who hasn't heard Nebraska referred to as Harvard on the Plains?

In fact, can everybody please dispense with acting like this is about academics, or worrying about being left behind, or anything except for money and super conferences.

Yes, The Big XII is dead, killed by corn shuckers, Tigers and greedy blank-blankers. And while this wake has turned into a roast, look for everybody to be mourning its demise in hindsight.

'ROIDED partial qualifiers? Harvard on the Plains?

Well, there is this story in the Omaha World-Herald. Maybe that's where Ms. Jennifer Floyd Engel learned about NU's reputation:

Few doubt the University of Nebraska-Lincoln can more than hold its own on the football fields of the Big Ten.

A bigger question is how it stacks up in the classroom and the lab. Nebraska's flagship university ranks lower in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and pulls in fewer research dollars than all of its new partners in the nation's most academically prestigious athletic conference.

But regardless of UNL's current standing, almost any university would envy the upward trajectory the school has been on academically over the past decade.

Its U.S. News ranking among comprehensive public universities has jumped from 57th to 43rd, a measure of its rising reputation.

Its federal research haul has more than doubled.

The school is attracting more of the state's brightest students, and more students than ever from out of state.

Were it not for the marked improvements of the past decade, Chancellor Harvey Perlman said he doubts UNL would be the newest member of the Big Ten.

Now that that new affiliation will have UNL running and collaborating with some of the most prestigious public universities in the land, Perlman and other campus leaders say they see no reason UNL can't aspire to loftier heights in the decades ahead.

“It's a new bar for academics and research,” said Ellen Weissinger, UNL's interim vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Joining the Big Ten is going to accelerate our pace.”

UNL's upward trajectory did not go unnoticed when the Big Ten's presidents and chancellors considered granting the school entry to the conference, said Lou Anna K. Simon, president of Michigan State University and head of the Big Ten's board.

While athletics and football were obviously the initial reason UNL was considered, she said, scholarship is taken too seriously in the Big Ten to add a school that was not a serious academic player.

“There was more to this than just a football game,” Simon said Saturday. “I think all of my colleagues felt very comfortable that Nebraska was an extraordinary fit.”

The recent boost in UNL's academic firepower has its roots in a period of serious introspection during the 1990s.

IT'S REALLY a shame that the best a sports columnist for an also-ran metro daily in north Tejas can muster is rank name calling. Then again, Tejas is the World's Biggest Feedlot, and the fumes from all that Chanel No. 2 must have gone to a Mizzou gal's head.

It's not like it would have taken much. As folks up here are keen enough to observe, the University of Missouri is close enough to the Ozarks to see your first cousin from there, and she/he is lookin' right purdy.

As much as anything, Engel's outpouring of bile reminds me of what became pretty much a yearly ritual for Missouri football fans after having their asses handed to them by the Huskers. Of course, they often didn't fare any better in the insult department than they did the football department.

I remember when my wife and I drove to Columbia in 1983 for the Nebraska-MU game. Of course, Nebraska won.

And naturally, some drunk-ass Mizzou student was staggering outside the stadium afterward screaming "Nebraska sucks! Nebraska sucks!" at Husker fans (who, by the way, applaud visiting teams in Lincoln, win or lose). Of course, we responded by chanting back "Nebraska wins! Nebraska wins!"

He shut up. Really, some things are just too easy.

LIKE ENGELS succumbing to the temptation to just "phone it in" by ripping off the patented insult-column style of well-known "Colorado malcontent" Woody Paige. She imitates the Denver Post sports columnist OK; I do it better.

But nobody approaches the real deal. And only a Tejas bulls*** artist would think she could.

That kind of baseless arrogance only can mean one thing. When UT starts up The Longhorn Network, Jennifer Floyd Engel probably will be the first hire.

Talk about your match made in Hillbilly Heaven.

He who laughs last. . . .

. . . laughs loudest.

Bo Pelini, to put it in Facebook speak, likes this.

HERE'S an Omaha World-Herald classic from December:

Bo Pelini had played it cool walking off the field, telling Texas coaches to go win a national title.

But he heard about a conflict at the threshold of the tunnel. Seemed a Texas fan and somebody from NU had exchanged words.

Bo marched toward the scene. Who was it? Bo wanted to engage the Texas fan.

Told nothing happened, he went back toward the locker room, where he saw Marc Boehm, NU assistant athletic director.

“Marc, I want to see (Big 12 head of officiating) Walt Anderson in there right (expletive) now!” Pelini shouted.

“BCS!” Pelini said as he entered the locker room. “That's why they make that call!”

Nebraska lost another heartbreaker to Texas Saturday. You saw it. Felt it. What you didn't feel were the post-game aftershocks reverberating through the concrete tunnels of Cowboys Stadium.

It hit hardest the Pelinis, who nearly orchestrated a monumental upset.

The reason why they didn't, according to Bo's and Carl's immediate reactions, was the officials' decision to add one second to the game clock after Colt McCoy's last throw out of bounds.

Originally, the clock expired, sending a flood of Nebraska players onto the field. But a review changed that call, led to Texas' game-winning kick and sent the Pelinis into madness.

According to Dan Beebe, Big 12 commissioner, officials did the right thing.

According to Walt Anderson, officials did the right thing. Where was the clock when the ball hit something out of bounds?

“There was a second left,” Anderson said.

But nothing or nobody could convince Bo Pelini.

“I want an explanation!” Pelini yelled outside his locker room.

Standing in that tunnel quietly watching him: Harvey Perlman, Paul Meyers, Eric Crouch.

“Get Coach Osborne down here!” Pelini said. “Can you go get Coach Osborne?”

Minutes later, Athletic Director Tom Osborne walked slowly toward the locker room in black trench coat. He entered the double doors to meet Pelini.

From outside the doors, one word could be heard loudest: “Cheaters!”

Then Osborne strode back to the field, where Texas was wrapping up its trophy presentation. En route to midfield, Osborne said to a World-Herald reporter: “Where is Dan Beebe?''

Beebe was standing at the 40-yard line talking to Assistant Commissioner Ed Stewart, a former Nebraska All-America linebacker.

As Osborne reached Beebe, the commissioner extended his hand. But Osborne didn't shake it. Osborne pointed at Beebe and said, “Would you go see Bo? Right now?''

By then, Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman had come on to the field. Perlman and Osborne walked with Beebe off the field and down a stadium tunnel.

The three exchanged no words on the walk. Down the tunnel, Osborne walked three steps in front of Beebe and Perlman walked to Beebe's right.

OF COURSE, you don't make a high-stakes decision like blowing up the Big 12 Conference just because you see Texas getting every benefit of the doubt because the conference's slot in the BCS championship was at stake.

(I'm not saying the call that saved Texas' hide was wrong, but I am questioning whether, if the Huskers had been in Texas' position in that game -- with the Longhorns' shot at the national title still at stake -- whether Big 12 officials don't let the clock run out and call it a night.)

But the fragrant aroma of a dish called revenge being served cold, much as a bowl of gazpacho, sure is a wonderful thing to greet you as you step into the Big Ten café.

Osama bin King, R-Iowa

Remember how mad you were when you saw Palestinians celebrating on 9/11?

Steve King, southwest Iowa's mad-hatter member of Congress, is one of those people. Just so long as the target for the terrorist's flying bomb is the Internal Revenue Service.

ACCORDING to Talking Points Memo, the Iowegian carbuncle on the House's ass told a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist like Tea Party Airlines pilot Joe Stack:

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

HELL, we invaded Iraq on flimsier evidence than that regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaida. What to make of a sitting congressman who can "empathize" with domestic terrorists who launch suicide attacks against the United States government?

When confronted by Think Progress about his remarks, King said that if we just hadn't built the World Trade Center and Pentagon, those 9/11 suicide jockeys wouldn't have had anywhere to aim those jetliners full of innocent Americans. Or something like that:

I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax.

(snip)

It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

WITH THE political heat now on high, King took the weasel route in an interview published in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

King said his heart goes out to the victims in Austin and their families.

“These acts of violence have no place in our society to be condoned or supported,” King told The World-Herald. “When someone finds themselves in this position of extreme frustration with the IRS, which I do understand that frustration, they should do what I did, get involved in the process.”

King said his treatment by the IRS contributed to his decision to run for public office.

As for the comments about imploding IRS buildings, King said he was employing levity in discussing his belief that the IRS should be abolished. He said he was referring to imploding the empty buildings left behind.

YEAH, RIGHT.

You know, if only the voters of southwest Iowa hadn't elected such a radical asshat to Congress, we who live across the Missouri River in Nebraska wouldn't point our fingers eastward and laugh so hard.

Maybe we should stop that, though. Terrorist-loving creeps like King -- especially when they get elected to high office -- hardly are a laughing matter.

I find this stuff so you don't have to

A Tea Party Airlines flight made a scheduled stop in Austin, Texas, today, destroying offices of the Internal Revenue Service.

It was a one-way trip. The pilot, disgruntled software engineer Joe Stack, punched his own ticket, according to The New York Times:

The authorities identified the pilot as Joseph A. Stack III, 53, and said his body had not yet been recovered from the building. The other person who was still unaccounted for was described by officials as a federal employee. A long, angry note posted on the Internet, on a Web site registered to Mr. Stack and signed “Joe Stack,” appeared to have been written by the pilot, though authorities had not confirmed the connection. By midafternoon, the company that hosted the site had taken the note down, saying it was acting at the request of the F.B.I.

The note related a long history of financial difficulties and frustrations with the nation’s tax and health care systems and with setbacks like the sharp decline of defense-related employment in southern California in the 1990s and the disruption of air travel after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001. It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

The F.B.I., which set up a command post near the scene of the crash, has a small satellite office — part of the bureau’s San Antonio field office — in a different part of the office complex where the crash took place.

Bill Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the criminal inquiry was in its early stages. “It’s a fluid situation that’s under investigation,” he said, which was echoed in a statement by Texas Gov. Perry. “There are a lot of indications but nothing definitive yet.”

As for Mr. Stack’s apparent suicide note, Mr. Carter said, “That’s being looked at by our San Antonio office, if that is a real note by this individual.”

OK, PERHAPS I'M being unfair with the Tea Party Airlines crack, though it's tough to pass up a line like that about such a confederacy of paranoid and angry dunces.

But on the other hand, while not all of Stack's rantings in his manifesto of a suicide note match up with what we take to be the "tea party position" (as amorphous a concept as that might be), enough of it sounded familiar enough to make an instant connection.

From Stack's website . . . before the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered it taken down:

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

(snip)

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of s*** at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

THERE'S ENOUGH in Joe "Blow Your" Stack's dispatch from around the bend to have the "progressives" and the "patriots" arguing forever over who gets to claim him. Me, I lean toward the teabaggers because of one important thing.

They're the ones combining some nasty demagoguery with barely cloaked insurrectionist rhetoric. They're the ones trying to tell you that you're living under tyranny, and that President Obama is Joe Stalin in blackface.

They're the ones -- too many of them, at least -- getting into bed with the "patriot" movement as the far-right "militias" lurk in the shadows.

They're the ones painting any government big enough to deal with a 21st-century nation of 300 million as big enough to be an inherently wicked proposition.

They're the ones with the "Don't Tread on Me" flags from the American Revolution. They're the ones talking about a "new revolution." They're the ones prattling on about "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Yes, Thomas Jefferson was the first to say that -- in 1787. His slave and mistress, Sally Hemings, didn't know nothin' 'bout no tree of liberty, however -- she was the personal property of Mr. Freedom.

I'M JUST FINE with heaping blame on the tea-party crowd because they've not been particularly particular about the sort of nuts with whom they jump in bed. I mean, what's one more, right?

Maybe I'd feel differently if they were more uncomfortable with the loons. Or if they didn't think their being mad as hell was the basis for anything other than being mad as hell.

Or maybe it was just those "THANK YOU GLENN BECK" signs when they were marching on Washington. Then again, it could have been all those instances of teabaggers trying to see how close they could get to Barack Obama while carrying firearms.

Whatever.

It remains that the tea-party movement once again has mainstreamed the idea of open insurrection against the United States' constitutionally mandated government, and thus has given a homicidal fruitcake like Joe Stack reason to believe his kamikaze mission would somehow be ennobled.

The lunatic is in their heads. And now American blood is on their hands.

Jesus saves; PACs don't

This conversion of a Planned Parenthood director in Texas was not brought to you by the Republican Party, nasty placards sold by the American Life League . . . or by anybody's political-action committee.

Lawyers did not rack up any billable hours.

Nary a vote was taken.

THIS CONVERSION of a Planned Parenthood director in Texas was brought to you by the Holy Spirit working through some pro-life folks down the street. Folks who looked at a Planned Parenthood director and saw a child of God in trouble and in need of friendship.

Planned Parenthood -- lacking any ideas on any better response to the Almighty -- got some lawyers and went to court. It wouldn't shock me if those committed to a better culture through flush political-action committees lawyered up, too, in a bid to put God back in His proper place as the Religious Right's mascot.

After all, when that ol' boy starts freelancing like He did in Bryan, Texas, last month, that can be nothing but bad for bidness. Everybody's bidness.

Tigers hook the 'Horns

The Alamo, the College World Series . . . when you're from Coahuila y Tejas, one ass-kicking is as good as another.

This time, the Louisiana State Tigers finished what Santa Anna started, administering an 11-4 beatdown to take the national championship of college baseball. As for Augie Garrido's Texas Longhorns . . . well, they came to Omaha, and all they got was another lousy doorstop.

But at least they showed up for the runner-up trophy presentation this time. That's something, I guess.

YOU MAY THINK this LSU alum sounds like a sore winner. Usually I'm not. But then again, we usually don't get an opportunity to pound Tejas into the dirt when a national title is on the line.

And as a native Louisianian, an LSU grad, an Omahan and a Nebraska fan -- not to mention having had seats in the middle of a bunch of Texas fans for Tuesday night's 5-1 Tiger loss in Game 2 of the final series -- Wednesday night's victory was sweet indeed.

Let me put it this way: The College World Series is personal to me, and not just because my alma mater has won the thing six times, with me there to see every championship. No, I fell in love with the CWS in 1983, when Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi and Texas held off Alabama to win it all.

I had box seats for the championship, having driven in from North Platte, Neb., for the big game. A certain young female colleague at the North Platte Telegraph procured those tickets for a buddy and me -- her father, as it happens, had been the Series' PR man since it moved to the Big O in 1950.

When you come across a pretty young thing with connections like that, there's only one thing to do. We were married Aug. 20, 1983, and she since has become a rabid LSU fan.

My Nebraska fandom already was well established when we tied the knot -- we were engaged at Husker football picture day, right outside Memorial Stadium.

THIS IS ALL TO SAY that I'm not just an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas. I'm an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas who also happened to marry into the CWS. And when you have a team who can't bother -- as happened in 2004 -- to show up to get its second-place trophy, you have a team (and a coach) who just disrespected family.

And when you have too-obnoxious, too-indulgent, too-tanned, too-bejeweled, too-enhanced, too too Tejas chiquitas who get too offended -- she and her buddies -- that not everybody in Rosenblatt Stadium is pulling for the Longhorns and that some who aren't are too close to her . . . well, podna, Texas has messed with what the College World Series (and my town) is all about.

Don't mess with Omaha.

Or with dem Tigahs.

It blowed up good

It blowed up real good.

The lightning-sparked fire -- and subsequent unguided launch of a tank full of "oil-industry byproducts" in Lamesa, Texas -- illustrates just why people put up "No Smoking" signs at gas stations. Unfortunately, there are no "No 50,000-Degree Bolts of Electricity" signs surrounding refineries and other facilities that can go boom in spectacular fashion.

Somehow, no firefighters were killed in the making of this video. Some cuss words were uttered, however -- part of the tank hit and wrecked the van from which the camera-ready stormchaser was filming. He was 200 yards away.

You'd cuss, too. You know you would.

Change Texicans can believe in

Well, Barack Obama did campaign on the theme of "change" -- I'm sorry, "CHANGE."

BUT I'M NOT SURE what Texas Gov. Rick Perry talked about Wednesday at an Austin "Tea Party" protest was what the president had in mind. The Associated Press has the details:

Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters' questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that.

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.

Texas did secede in 1861, but the North's victory in the Civil War put an end to that.

AS THE GREAT modern-day prophet Walker Percy wrote, "The center did not hold." We're seeing that come true more and more every day. Selah.

What the hell's so complicated about 'Don Ho'?

A nawth Tejas pol thinks Amurcans is so thowed by Asian names thet voters whut come fum thar oughta change unpronounceateable names like "Ho" and "Chen" to sumthin' Texicans can say, like "Yeller" and "Chop Chop."

It all started in a Texas House committee hearing when a representative from the Organization of Chinese Americans tried to explain to Rep. Betty Brown, R-Bugtussle Terrell, that Asians have problems voting because they often use an anglicized name on driver's licenses and other documents rather than the transliteration of their legal, given name.

AT THAT POINT, according to the Houston Chronicle, Brown told Ramey Ko that his fellow Asians wouldn't have no trouble no mo' if they would just change their names to something easier to pronounce than, say, "Ko."

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” the legislator asked.

Later on -- apparently sensing the hole she'd dug for herself wasn't nearly deep enough -- Brown decided to make herself absolutely clear to the Chinese-American rep.

“Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

THE WOMAN has a point. Imagine how much bigger of a career the late Don Ho could have had if he'd recorded "Tiny Bubbles" under the name "Don Wojciehowicz."

Ditto for Japanese singing star Kyu Sakamoto, of "Sukiyaki" fame. If he'd had the sense God gave Americans and called himself "K. Hackysack," the man could have been bigger than the Beatles.

At least with the Beatles, you had you a Limey name whut Texicans could deal with. Even if them Anglish people spelt it funny 'n' all.

These modern times

A vignette of life in these Modern Times comes from the Gret Stet of Tejas, where everything is up to date in the swampy metropolis of Houston.

Including all the latest methodologies for treating workers like dog turds in the punch bowl -- as evidenced by the indignities heaped upon the long-suffering journalists of the Houston Chronicle, of whom there are today a lot fewer.

FROM A POST hacked up on the Houston Press' Hair Balls blog:

The Chronicle hierarchy took steps yesterday to insure no employees ripped off the Hearst Corp. by spiriting away anything that didn't belong to them. Security guards stopped anyone carrying boxes out the door and told them they would have to provide written authorization from a supervisor.

Some employees who cleaned out their filing cabinets yesterday of old story clips and other residual flotsam from their years at the newspaper in case they were fired today had to return to the fifth-floor newsroom for a permission slip.

ONCE AGAIN, Charlie Chaplin's 1936 masterpiece Modern Times is a movie for the times at hand. Enjoy.

'I won't go schizo, will I?' 'It's a distinct possibility.'

That wasn't oregano what Texicans been puttin' in their picante sauce.

And friends don't let friends make political ads while they're Texas toasted. Because at the bottom of that mine lies a big, big howler.

We are amused.

Brownies, anyone?

And if you're still not convinced. . . .

Did I mention that Hurricane Ike was only a strong Category 2 storm when it plowed into the Texas coast?

This is why you evacuate

These government before-Ike and after-Ike pictures of Texas' Bolivar Peninsula is why you get the hell out of Dodge when The Man says "Get the hell out of Dodge."

As anyone in south Louisiana will tell you -- well, anyone but the really stupid and the really foolish -- you don't mess around with hurricanes. Hurricanes have lots of ways they can kill you.

And they have lots more ways they can kill you if you do something stupid. Like stay on the coast when one's aimed at you.